The Justice was so agitated that even when the horse and carriage went forward he could not relax, clinging as he did to the very edge of the seat and straining his narrowed eyes to the road ahead, as though he might will it to shrink so that in only a minute he could step down to the path that would lead him to Emma Tanner’s front door. Yet he knew well enough that the journey through the busy centre of Blackburn and out on to the Preston New Road which would carry him to Corporation Park and the street beside it was all of three miles, with a deal of narrow roads and congested alleys to slow him down even before the carriage left the heart of Blackburn itself. He knew that. Yet still he could not settle.

It was when the carriage was making its way up Town Hall Street and on to King William Street that Caleb Crowther’s searching eyes were drawn to the kerbside. There was something disturbingly familiar about the thin, dark-haired ragamuffin who was absorbed in arranging the colourful blooms which, now and then, she offered to strolling passers-by. ‘Only a shilling… fresh as the morning,’ she called out, and the two children happily playing beside her added their chirpy persuasion, ‘Only a shilling… only a shilling,’ whilst giggling uncontrollably in between. Molly smiled patiently at their antics.

Hearing the approach of a carriage, Molly hurriedly got to her feet and propelled the two small girls to a safer distance from the road, instructing them to ‘stay there’. Then, snatching up a particularly large bunch of flowers from the bucket, she approached the carriage, which had been forced to a slower pace by the many traders’ barrows that lined the narrow, cobbled street. ‘Fresh blooms, sir,’ she called out, running alongside the carriage and holding up the flowers to the gent inside. ‘Fresh blooms for the little lady,’ she coaxed, peering inside to where Caleb Crowther was eyeing her intently, and desperately trying to recollect where he had seen the ragged creature before; he had seen her before, he was sure of it.

Deeply curious and strangely disturbed, Caleb Crowther leaned his ungainly form nearer to the open carriage doorway. Already there had been stirred in him a host of unsettling memories: of a dark and deadly night when he and his officers had scoured the canal banks for the criminal who had snatched his own grandson for a ransom. That same night he had found the culprit: a young street urchin with big bold eyes as black as coal, and known to have been brought up by another no-good creature, who went by the name of Sal Tanner. Oh, but he had enjoyed snatching the young wretch from the makeshift home, which was a derelict workman’s cabin on the canal banks. What a sight it made as it burned to the ground! However, his joy had been short-lived, for the urchin made good her getaway even before the prison cart had delivered her to the jail. He had never forgotten. Never forgiven, and he was not a man to leave old scores unsettled.